Concert to benefit music therapy program

Wednesday

The Persbacker-Wyman Family Foundation has established a $40,000 matching gift challenge in support of Sound Connections.

A music therapy outreach program offered by the Cultural Center at Ponte Vedra Beach, Sound Connections benefits children with special needs in four elementary schools in St. Johns County.

The cultural center is challenging the community to help raise $80,000 to sustain this outreach program for the 2018-2019 school year at Cunningham Creek, Ocean Palms, PVPV/Rawlings and Valley Ridge Academy elementary schools.

From now until Dec. 1, every contribution of $50 or more will be matched dollar-for-dollar, up to $40,000. The matching gift challenge will help the center achieve its goal to raise $100,000.

Music therapy is a well-established professional health discipline that uses music as the therapeutic stimulus to achieve non-musical treatment goals.

The cultural center's board-certified music therapists, Minda Gordon and Candice Sirak, use music as an education-related service to promote learning and skill acquisition at selected public schools in St. Johns County. Music therapy, an evidence-based practice, shows a correlation between speech and singing, rhythm and motor behavior, memory for song and memory for academic material, and overall ability of preferred music to enhance mood, attention and behavior to optimize the student's ability to learn and interact.

Music is processed by a different area of the brain than speech and language. Therefore, a child may be able to more easily absorb information and skills presented with music. One of the purposes of the cultural center's music therapy program is to provide children who have varied disabilities with an initial assist using melodic and rhythmic strategies, followed by fading of musical cues to aid in generalization and transfer to other learning environments.

The cultural center's goal is to offer music therapy in all St. Johns County elementary schools, and to expand the program into middle and high schools.

To help in the fundraising efforts, the cultural center will host a special event from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 6 at the Ponte Vedra Concert Hall. The Sounds of Music will be a music-filled night with a silent auction, dinner and three musical acts performed by the children themselves, and special guests, Players by the Sea and the St. Augustine Orchestra.

Tickets are $150 and are available at ccpvb.org or by calling 280-0614, ext. 1206. Funds raised by this event will be eligible for matching by the Persbacker-Wyman Family Foundation.

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